Our hopes of someday colonizing some deep-space rock just got a lot greater.Maybe.Astronomers at the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) telescope in Chile have discovered a crop of previously unknown alien planets. Their haul includes 16 "super-Earth's," or planets with masses greater than our own but smaller than gas giants like Jupiter.One of these, dubbed HD 85512 b, is orbiting along the edge of its host star's so-called habitable zone, a slim region whose distance is just so that liquid water could exist provided ideal conditions. HD 85512 b is estimated to be merely 3.6 times more massive than Earth. And its host star, at a scant 35 light-years away from our own, is pretty much crashing on our cosmic couch.These new findings are being presented at Extreme Solar Systems II, a NASA-sponsored symposium in Wyoming that runs through Saturday. As research contributor Francesco Pepe of the Geneva Observatory tells the BBC:“These planets will be among the best targets for future space telescopes to look for signs of life in the planet’s atmosphere by looking for chemical signatures such as evidence of oxygen.”Analyzing HD 85512 b and the rest of this bumper crop will offer insights into the potential existence of extraterrestrial surface water. Speaking with reporters earlier today, Lisa Kaltenegger, an exoplanet habitability expert with both the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said we're "in for an incredibly exciting time. We're not just going out there to discover new continents – we're actually going out there to discover brand new worlds."This builds on an already breakneck exoplanet hunt. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, astronomers have discovered 564 alien worlds – all confirmed – and are busy investigating 1,200 candidate objects.Connections
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